Known vehicle occupant restraint systems which have a belt pretensioner are used for displacing a belt link element engaging the belt in case of an accident. The displacement of the belt link element is, when the belt pretensioner is activated, principally limited by the available travel of the belt pretensioner drive device, for example a piston/cylinder unit. The end of this travel is limited by a limit stop, and extremely high deceleration values occur when this limit stop is reached. All components of the system must be dimensioned for the related high loads.
An occupant restraint system which is known from DE 94 04 272.1 U1 comprises a belt pretensioner which displaces a belt buckle. The belt pretensioner is connected with the belt buckle via a tension cable and a sleeve arranged between one end of the tension cable and the belt buckle. In the event of a collision, the belt pretensioner pulls the belt buckle, and, therefore, the sleeve closer to a cable deflector. The sleeve impacts the cable deflector with its front face in the final phase of the movement of the belt buckle and is plastically deformed. This ensures that all moved parts are slowly retarded. However, since the sleeve is arranged between the end of the cable and the belt buckle, the dimension of the known vehicle occupant restraint system is large.